Page 2 of Her Royal Highness
But Jude is still watching me with a funny look on her face, three little wrinkles popping up over her nose.
“I’m serious, though, Millie,” she says. “If this is about me or us...”
She sighs, her breath warm on my face and smelling like that lemon-mint gum she always has on her.
“It’s not,” I tell her again, pulling a thread from my plaid sleeping bag. “And we’re not really an us, anyway. I mean, we are in that I’m a person, and you’re a person, and together, that makes two people, which means the common grammatical definition of ‘us’ technically fits, but—”
Her hand clamps over my mouth, and she laughs. “No nervous-talky Millie,” she says, and I nod behind her palm with a muffled, “Sorry.” There’s this fun thing that happens sometimes when I get nervous where words just come out, but not in the right order, exactly, and half the time, not the words I want to be saying, but there they are anyway, a flood of words between me and Jude, yet again.
But when she drops her hand, those wrinkles are back. “Wearean us,” she says, reaching out to twine her fingers with mine. “Maybe nobody knows we are, but to me, I feel... us-ish.”
Cheeks hot, I squeeze her fingers back. “The us-iest.”
Jude reaches over to fiddle with the ends of my hair again. “The most us I’ve ever felt with anyone,” she says.
“More us-y than with Mason?”
The words are out before I even have time to think aboutthem, really, and I immediately wish I could call them back. Mason is Jude’s ex, the boy she’d dated since freshman year, and they broke up last spring. Right before it all started with me and Jude. Since that first kiss, sitting on the floor of her room last month, we haven’t mentioned Mason. It’s been easy, since he’s away at soccer camp or something for part of the summer, but sometimes I wonder how it’ll be when he comes back. I’ve always liked Mason even if Iamhead over heels for his girlfriend, but there’s no doubt things have been easier with me and Jude without him here.
Jude flops onto her back, studying the ceiling of the tent. “Weren’t we kind of an us even when Mason was around?”
She rolls back onto her side to face me, and I feel my cheeks go hot again, because yeah, we were. There wasn’t any of this kissing or other fun stuff, but she was definitely my favorite person to be around.
“Maybe,” I acknowledge, and she grins before draping an arm over my waist.
Jude kisses me again, and thoughts about Mason, Scotland, and fancy schools with unicorn crests vanish in the warm summer air.
CHAPTER2
“Mason is back.”
I’m sitting in Darcy’s game room at her house, slouched on the floor with my back against the couch, an Xbox controller in my hands.
On the giant TV in front of me, I watch a dragon grab my avatar, Lady Lucinda, by the head, shaking her so hard that the body goes flying offscreen.
Great.
Sighing, I rest the controller on my stomach as the screen goes white. “That was my last life,” I mutter, reaching for the can of Sprite Zero beside me. Darcy nudges my foot with hers, her toenails a bright purple.
“Millie, did you hear me?”
On my other side, Lee sits up, taking the controller from me and restarting the game. “She heard you, Darce. She doesn’t care.”
“I do care,” I insist, “because I like Mason, and it’s nice that he’s back. I just don’t think it has anything to do with me.”
Crossing her legs, Darcy sits up straighter as she looks at me over the tops of her glasses. They’re new, the acid-green frames bright around her dark eyes. “Millie,” she says, and I roll my shoulders, uncomfortable.
“They’re done,” I remind her as I sit up, too. “Over. And me and Jude are—”
“A summer fling that will break your heart,” Darcy fills in, and I scowl at her.
This is the drum Darcy has been beating ever since I told her about me and Jude—that Jude is flighty, that she changes her mind more often than she changes hair colors, that I know what Jude is like.
I know she’s saying it because she cares about me, but it’s still not exactly my favorite stuff to hear, and besides, she’s wrong. And maybe a little jealous. Jude and Darce were really close a few years back, but as Jude and I got tighter, Darcy sort of ended up on the outside a bit. Our Foursome Friend Group is constantly shifting.
Me and Jude now being a thing has obviously shifted things even more.
“Jude is kind of flaky,” Lee acknowledges as his fingers fly on the controller’s buttons. He glances at me, auburn hair flopping over one eye. “Sorry, Mill, but you know it’s true. It’s one of the things we love about her, but I can see it making her a bad girlfriend.”
